GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

Alice’s face became redder. Aphra Behn laughed.

“It’s unnatural,” Li Po said. “My yang needs its yin.”

Burton laughed because “yang” meant “human excrement” in a West African language. Po asked him why he was laughing. When Burton explained, the Chinese laughed uproariously.

“Well, if I can’t have a woman, I’ll work out my desire with exercise. What say we fence for an hour or so, rapiers or sabers?”

“I need it, too,” Burton said, “but you’re drunk. You’d be no match.”

Li Po protested loudly and shrilly that he could have drunk twice as much and still beat Burton with any weapon Burton cared to choose. Burton turned away from him, and the Chinese staggered to his chair, fell into it, and began snoring. Frigate and Turpin carried him to the bedroom door. This, however, was locked with Po’s codeword, which his bearers did not know. They placed him on the hall floor and returned to the big room.

“We’ll all be behaving like Po if we have to stay here,” Turpin said. He went to a converter and ordered a tall glass of gin with a lemon twist. Aphra, who had a glass of the same, raised it and said, “A toast to craziness! This may be a gaol, but it beats Newgate.”

She knew what she was talking about; she had twice been in debtors’ prison.

She could also afford her cavalier attitude, though it was not realistic. She had a lover, de Marbot, with whom she was happy, and she had every luxury she’d ever had on Earth and many more. Except freedom. That, however, did not bother this adaptable and cheery woman just now.

What was keeping some of them from studying their peril was the vast potentialities of the list. Where they should have been examining what limited them, they were considering what gratifications it offered. Though Burton could understand their excitement over this, he was disturbed by their lack of concern for the dangers that were—as it were—just around the corner.

Judging from their facial expressions, Nur was the only one thinking of the unknown enemy. Burton felt like kicking the others. Instead, he slapped his hands together sharply, jolting them from their dreams.

“That’s enough of nonsense,” Burton said. “The situation is serious. Deadly. There’s no time to think of anything but how we’re going to fight the enemy. If we defeat him, you may play all you want. Till then … The unknown has a great advantage over us in that he can use the Computer better than we. But if we can learn how to use it against him, it becomes our ally. Let me remind you that the Computer is not just that huge protein electroneural mass at the bottom of the central shaft. The Computer is also the tower, this vast building in which we reside. The brain is the central protein organ, the clearinghouse. But the majority of circuits are in the floors, the walls and the ceilings of the tower. We’re in the heart, the nerves of the enemy. And we can find ways to strike at that heart, those nerves. Or perhaps I should say, ways to seize them and use them as weapons.”

“If you’re thinking of belling the cat,” Alice said, “we don’t even know where the cat is.”

“It may be another mouse who’s buffaloed us into thinking it’s a cat,” Nur said.

“If … if … may be,” Burton said. “No more speculations on ifs. We abandon speculation; we act.”

“Fine. But how?” Nur said. “Everything we’re saying now or will say may be, probably is, overheard. And perhaps seen.”

“I said, ‘No more if’s and maybe’s!’ ” Burton thundered.

Frigate laughed and said, “We can’t help that, we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. We must be, or we wouldn’t have come here.”

“What are you talking about?” Burton said.

“He’s paraphrasing the conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice in Wonderland,” Alice said.

“The mention of the cat reminded me of the Cheshire Cat,” Frigate said. “In a way, the unknown is the grin without a cat.”

Burton threw his hands up.

“I wish I had all of you in the army!” he cried.